The 20th Century is Over

The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?
I mean in hindsight, dont it seem quite clear?
At least it does from where I sit here
How could we go from a horse-drawn cart
To Mars in 100 years?
He started out slowly, nineteen-ought-one-two-and-three
To pull us in quietly into the 20th Century.

But before the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk
Lifted off that sandy ground,
Hed invented Thomas Edison, modern medicine, electric sound.

The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?

We chased the War to End All Wars.
With a party that roared and crashed
Took a second world war ten years later
Before we found ourselves jobs and gas.

And Hitler! Good Lord, Hitler, what was he thinking there?
You put the Devil in a Chaplin moustache,
Grease back his crop-top hair and millions will follow
How could we swallow how could we swallow that word for word?
That someone so evil could walk among the people
Who inhabit this planet Earth?

The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?

The Sixties framed with sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Assassinations, demonstrations, and shots from the grassy knoll.
He chased away Vietnam with the calm
Of punk rock rage.
You never knew what craziness was lying
In wait from page to page.
Reganism Communism Reaganism Communism
And they tore down the Berlin Wall,
But our optimism is still standing,
Waiting for a call that never came.
Much is very different, but too much is still the same.

He shrank the computer down from a warehouse to a chip.
And then he shrunk it down again and again and again and
now its just a tiny blip.
And now the blip is so wee, so small it cant be seen
By the naked eye at all.
Cant be seen.

But it glues us, all of us in our house,
To the mouse,
To the screen, to the screen.
Just like him, in a room thats dim,
Were all awaiting our final scene.
Were awaiting our final scene.

The 20th Century is over, but what if it never began?
What if the entire 100 years was the work of a single man?

Lets override the circuits tonight
And lets write the 21st Century ourselves
Lets get it right